Many businesses are adopting digitally led business models in order to better service their customers’ needs and many companies are choosing to exclude or bury their telephone number without properly considering the impact on customer experience and journey.

A Google study on “Click to Call” found that 70% of mobile searchers have used the “call button” and the reasons for calling a business as opposed to using a website or other means were:

  • To quickly get an answer/achieve my goal - 59%
  • To talk to a person - 57%
  • I have more questions or need more information than the website provides - 54%
  • To accomplish something that can't be done on the website - 44%
  • To get more accurate information than is found via other sources - 43%
  • Convenience - 42%
  • Product or service is expensive and requires a conversation - 12%

Calls touch every area of your business

As the study shows calls are originated for a number of reasons: marketing (research), sales (purchase), support and ongoing service. Call data has rich qualities which can be used to inform, plan and measure business decisions across all business functions but many businesses fail to invest in harvesting this data and using simple analytical tools to drive business performance.

Example 1: A travel business invests considerable sums of money in online paid media advertising and they expect this will drive considerable call enquiries to the business so they need to be able to track which channels and keywords are efficient and to be able to map the customers’ online journey in order to deal with that enquiry in a far more effective manner both for the customer and for the business.

Example 2: The call centre for a major UK business is experiencing a growing volume of and more complex calls. The business continues to invest in resources in order to meet demand but the business has little insight into the source and reason for the calls and how this could be dealt with more quickly and simply, for example by having better online help guides or more self-service features.

Example 3: A B2B provider employs several people in its (tele-) sales team who are responsible for lead generation. The business needs to ensure that the team are working efficiently and meeting numerous KPIs such as volume of calls, talk time, conversion to opportunities and through the use of smart technology the business can ensure the team spend all of their time prospecting.

When we think about a customer journey there are multiple touch points before, during, after the sale, and on an ongoing basis throughout the customer lifecycle. The most successful businesses will be able to join up these interactions to form a complete view of the customer engagement which they can then influence and measure over time. This is particularly relevant in B2B companies where the buying cycle is often longer with more stakeholders.

Aren’t call volumes decreasing?

Call volumes are considerable and growing, this is primarily due to smartphones and their ability to research, identify and connect with businesses. Research by BIA/Kelsey in the US predicts the volume of mobile calls to businesses which leap from 93 billion in 2015 to 162 billion in 2019.

Telephone calls have been and will remain a considerable channel for businesses but often the investment in the phone system and other infrastructure is forgotten or not prioritised despite the significant cost, financial or opportunity, of dealing with these calls.

Investment in technology

With scale, complexity and globalisation businesses need to invest in technology and the ever expanding choice of cloud services available to businesses really is transforming the way we work. Cloud-computing has the capacity to completely remove costly and inconvenient infrastructure and replace it with a far less unwieldy and cheaper cloud-hosted solution. The advantages of being able to dispense with on-premise storage, hardware, servers and networking components are numerous. Hosted PBX provides a good example of these benefits, offering a fully-managed, highly flexible cloud-based alternative to traditional phone systems.

What is Hosted PBX?

Hosted PBX is a cloud-based, business-level phone system designed to offer companies of all sizes the benefits of a fully-featured phone system without the significant setup costs and impracticalities of traditional PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network) phone systems.

The most obvious advantage of Hosted PBX is its capacity to save your business money. The entry level price is affordable – certainly compared to the cost of having a traditional PSTN system installed, but the built-in capacity to scale up in line with your growing requirements means that, should you need to upgrade your system, scalability will be extremely fluid. The fact that Hosted PBX is cloud-based also eliminates maintenance costs, a massive advantage considering the significant costs often associated with onsite systems installed in each office.

Flexibility and ease of use are also key selling-points. Hosted PBX is highly-customisable, allowing you to set up your phone system aligning it to your business. Setting up departments, teams and skill groups is typically achievable with just a few clicks. This flexibility also extends to additional offices and home workers. The fact that Hosted PBX allows you to connect to your system anywhere in the world (all you need is a stable internet connection) must also be considered as a huge benefit in today’s globalized economy.

 

By Carol Carini, senior marketing manager at Infinity

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